Eye-saving Advice For C-span Viewers

Attention, all you Cablevision of Central Florida subscribers who profess to be C-SPAN junkies. Here is your word for the day. Two words, actually.

Duct tape.

You know -- silvery, about 2 1/2 inches wide, comes in rolls. If you want some relief from the truly annoying ''crawl'' of stock market information that's running during Cablevision's C-SPAN telecasts, get some duct tape and apply a strip to the bottom of your TV screen.

You still won't be able to see the home state, party affiliation and/or name of whoever's speaking from the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, but at least this way you can avoid that streaming, white-on- blue electronic ticker tape that makes your eyes blur.

Cablevision created this problem a couple of weeks ago when it moved the Cable Satellite Public Affairs Network (C-SPAN) from a channel it had to itself to a channel it must share.

C-SPAN's old slot went to CNN Headline News, a service in which Cablevision marketing director Jim Rozier said many subscribers had expressed interest.

C-SPAN is now on the channel that previously offered easy-listening instrumental music and the stock market crawl by day and community access programming, which can be anything from interviews with local public officials to sermons from self-styled evangelists, by night.

The crawl and the access programming are still there. C-SPAN gets the daytime hours, which it devotes to live, unedited coverage of the House of Representatives and call-in talk shows about government and the news, and the wee hours of the morning, which it devotes mainly to taped replays of hearings in the House and the Senate.

Rozier said Monday that Cablevision's technicians are looking for a way to shrink the C-SPAN picture electronically so that it will be visible in its entirety above the crawl. Those efforts have failed so far, but the experimentation goes on, he said.

If, in the future, Cablevision ever is able to add the Financial News Network to its roster of services (there is some interest), then the need for a stock market crawl will be eliminated. This could take a while, however -- like forever.

As for C-SPAN getting a channel of its own again, Rozier was not encouraging. C-SPAN is the least watched program service Cablevision carries, according to Rozier.

''If we weren't such big supporters of C-SPAN, we wouldn't still be carrying it at all,'' he said, adding that while Cablevision really wants to keep the C-SPAN watchers happy, ''We also have to go with the masses.''

The ''masses,'' it happens, have been saying they want one of two independent ''superstations,'' either Chicago's WGN or New York's WOR. More than 7,000 Cablevision subscribers have responded to a poll Cablevision is taking to determine what to put in the next available channel opening. WGN has 37 percent of the vote. WOR has 34 percent. C-SPAN has five, Rozier said -- not 5 percent, but five votes.

Cablevision will probably have a runoff later this month between WGN and WOR.

Will this news shut up the C-SPAN devotees? Probably not, nor should it.

I'm not a C-SPAN junkie myself. I have to split my watching time between a couple of dozen channels, and C-SPAN, unlike say CNN Headline News or Music Television (MTV), does not lend itself to ''snack'' viewing. You must tune in and stay tuned in for a while to fully comprehend what's going on.

But what's going on is important. As one passionate C-SPAN watcher pointed out to me recently, C-SPAN is about the only source of straight, unfiltered news to which we have access.

So what if MTV is more popular. Never mind that Cablevision has had more complaints from investors who don't like their ticker tape intruded on the House-in-action than from C-SPAN watchers who are irritated by the tape. What matters, he argued, is that C-SPAN be there for the people who have the time and the desire to be truly well-informed citizens.

These people can have an impact disproportionate to their numbers, he said. They are important to democracy, he said, so they should be encouraged, not deprived.

Somehow, I don't think they'll settle for duct tape.

Stop, thief: So far, about 200 Central Floridians have ''given themselves up'' under the terms of the monthlong ''amnesty'' Cablevision inaugurated April 15.

The area's largest cable system estimates that it's losing up to $500,000 a year in revenue to people who are unofficially and illegally tapped into its transmis- sions.

Cable ''theft'' violates state and federal laws and is punishable by fines of up to $1,000, up to a year's jail term, or both. Through May 15, unauthorized Cablevision subscribers can come forward to become ''customers in good standing'' without fear of retribu- tion.